A bit of a ramble but hopefully any answers from this can help other people too. I’ve been on the self improvement journey for a year or two now, working on really changing my outlook on life and becoming less snappy and sarcastic. I’ve gotten in good shape, have a good job, a fantastic girlfriend and so on, but I find my biggest problem of late is that I keep falling back to my initial responses to some of my close friends (I’ll explain below).

When we were younger they used to be very sarcastic and quite malicious in their ‘banter’ (not so much anymore), but I feel like my subconscious is used to that dog eat dog environment and I find myself making snappy remarks and being quite aggressive (personal insults that really aren’t necessary). I realise I’m probably just not taking responsibility for my actions, but I always seem to fall back into this mental mould where I’m overly aggressive at times. I don’t find myself falling into these patterns with new friends or less close people, mainly just my really close mates. I was wondering if anybody has any advice on resetting (or reducing) these engrained responses with people (or even with situations) that you are close to. A large part I’m sure is just keeping my mouth shut at times, but any other advice on dealing with this would be appreciated a lot.

Thanks!